r/basement

Title.

Just bought a house, immediately got water in the basement. Dealt with the drywall and black mold in basement. Was planning on running down spouts away from the house, but then I saw this hole and it’s exactly where most of the water was in the basement.

How would you fill it? Sand? Stone? Dirt? All 3? Concrete? Don’t want to make it worst, but want to see if we can stop water from coming in before storms roll through.

I got an Airthings monitor and I keep noticing my CO2 keeps rising in the middle of the day. I'd like to look for mitigation strategies. I was looking into this:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Panasonic-WhisperComfort-60-Energy-Recovery-Ventilator-ERV-Wall-Ceiling-Mount-Exhaust-Fan-FV-06VE1/331411540

But, I feel this may be drastic as I will only be down there two days a week as I have a man cave down there. Are there cheaper options I can try first?

We are about to put an offer in for a beautiful home, however we came across a few things in the basement that have us a bit hesitant.

Home was built in the 1960s. Gutters were installed six or seven years ago. Judging by these photos, how serious are these cracks and potential signs of historical water? Should we run from this? The upstairs looks great and renovated. Thanks in advance for any advice.

I’ve have scoured the depths of the internet (Reddit), and there doesn’t seem to be a concise answer on what to do with stone basements.

In my case, there seems to have never been mortar more than 2 feet under the sill.

I get a significant amount of water intrusion but trying to mitigate that through grading and gutters.

What I am considering doing is adding lime mortar on the lower 2/3rds where there currently isn’t mortar. Would add a few weep holes and then poly sheets down into an interior drain to a sump pump.

My fiancé however, wants to leave the walls as granite but my concern is the joists with humidity.

What is the best method for this type of basement for both humidity and water control?

Background is house is 1890 and in NH.

Had a house build and it was finished April 2025. There’s one spot in the basement where the wall gets wet after a hard rain. Normal to light rain doesn’t affect it.

All the exterior basement walls were painted with the black rubber sealant stuff.

Before May 2026 I can tell you the grade wasn’t correct and I could see how it’s possible for water to pool in that location on the outside however I’ve never witnessed it. After some good storms this spring, the wall was getting wet after each one, so I tried my best to build up the low area for better grading and I thought I’ve achieved enough slope away from the house. However the hard rain we received yesterday still resulted in moisture on the wall (although I think less than usual; I wasn’t home until late last night to inspect the wall).

My last little hope is maybe the weep hole in the bottom channel for the house siding is allowing to much water to go along the block on the outside ?

So some questions - how does moisture get to the INSIDE of the block even when the outside is sealed? Should I plug the weep hole with silicone to see if it helps? Will it cause a problem somewhere else? What else could I ask my home builder to do (he’s been really good with helping me with issues that arise even a year later)? His last suggestion was addressing the grading.

The water on the outside of the block that’s wet is pretty much exactly where the moisture is on the inside. Sometimes there is actual water on my inside wall and not just wet looking. Not enough to leak down to the floor and pool if that makes sense.

We have a century home and our basement has concrete foundation walls with a concrete floor. Sometimes water comes in through the cracks of the foundation/and or floor if there is heavy rainfall. I believe this is somewhat normal due to hydrostatic pressure. It doesn’t flood, but there is certainly water that sort of collects around the edges of the basement and absorbs into the concrete in the middle of the floor for a little bit and then usually goes away.

The problem is that the previous owner sprayed insulation on the walls in the basement…I think it’s probably more of a hinderance than a help in general and I have no idea why they chose to do this. The worst part is that the outer coating of the insulation is some sort of fuzzy soft material. The inside is yellow foam.

As you can see by my photos, the soft fuzzy material absorbs water, and this allows mold to develop.

I believe this is probably bad mold 😩😩 not that any mold is good… but this one looks particularly concerning.

*this corner looks really dirty because we had shelving in front that we moved

Obviously, I am not going to be able to do anything about the fact that some water comes in sometimes due to hydrostatic pressure, given the age of the home. I am not sure if they sprayed this insulation on the foundation to hide something. It is not a finished basement and if it were just concrete, it would not concern me greatly. However, obviously, the presence of this insulation and mold IS concerning.

What do I do about this? I do not feel comfortable or experienced enough to remove all of the insulation… I thought maybe I could remove the bottom half but that still sounds really daunting. Obviously something needs to be done. Just any advice regarding the insulation, the mold and the situation is welcome. If you are knowledgable on the insulation or why they would have done this, that would help too.

After a heavy storm on Friday, today I found a soaked rug in my finished basement. Traced the water path: it's entering at the foundation wall directly below a basement window, running along the wall-floor joint, and pooling under the laminate a few feet away — water came up through a seam when I pressed on the floor. Pulled up the wet section: a couple planks are swollen with small mold spots on the underside, everything else is dry.

The likely culprit: the window well outside on that wall gas some soil and literally has plants growing in it. My theory is that area isn't draining properly or something? I need advice.

Barely any mold on the laminate only in the corners a small amount.

Curious what others think — does this read right to you, or does the evidence suggest something else? Do I need to cut up the dry wall?

I have a 2ft wide sidewalk that spans my homes foundation. Problem is it's slightly tilted towards the home so some water pools in that area. I was gonna lay some trench drains along side the sidewalk and foundation any advice? I won't have grading but the water will have a place to move to. There will be about 6" of dirt between the trench drains and the wall of the home.

Been wanting to freshen up the basement in my new home since I moved in. Was hoping to have it done before washer and dryer came but couldn’t get it timed out right.

The amount of construction dust, dirt, cobwebs, paint chips, lint etc that was down there was crazy.

I power washed, shop vac’d, and then swept up as much as I could before priming. I couldn’t even fathom how different it would look. We just finished the priming today and wow!

• I did not paint the walls, they were already like that
• the floor was already painted so I just wanted to refresh it.
• it is a somewhat wet basement (ROA, VA) so I wanted to make sure to still see the water when it happens but chose a paint that will stand up to it.

I'm currently restoring an old cellar in Italy, house is about 200 years old and still structurally fine according to engineers even though there's not much of a foundation, stones laid directly on hard marl, grade is about in the middle of the stone part in this corner or about 150cm/5ft above floor.

During the rainy half of the year I get about a liter a day of water pooling down which isn't much of an issue, previous owners rendered everything with cement and made a cement mound to act like a drainage channel and it kind of worked besides the trapped water.

I'm restoring it to be a commercial cellar and can't have exposed soil or standing water, thinking about cutting the channel open to put a proper drain and covering the soil with some sort of breatheable render but I'm not getting any good suggestions from surveyors/builders so I'd be very grateful for any suggestions.

Not looking to put any modern or intensive solutions as the building currently is structurally sound and works for its intended use, just trying to divert the water, cover the subsoil and not cause any new problems.

Thanks in advance

We're slowly finishing our daylight basement (~750 sq ft, 1920s house, PNW) in a house we bought recently. I refinished half already, now we're moving over to this rickety staircase (first and second pic). The clearance is unfortunately too tight to frame out and rebuild the staircase away from this basement wall.

My current plan is to bring the basement framing up close to the landing, remove the existing basement paint, and parge the walls to fill any voids. I have been skim coating the basement floor to fill any voids and make it walkable. I just finished waterproofing the exterior wall on this side and installing a perimeter drain, so I'm not too worried about water intrusion and our basement is fairly shallow (3 feet at its deepest).

What are people's experience with parging? Is it a waste of time? will the parging eventually fail and bubble off, the way that drylock does? I'll note that this wall on the other side, that has not been waterproofed on the exterior (yet) appears to have a very poor attempt at parging that bubbled off at some point, likely from moisture (last pic)

I want to paint my walls and basement floor after this very ugly fix. I know you shouldn't really use dry lock as it just bubbles if the walls get wet again....any suggestions? What about a lime wash?

English is not my main language and I am not familiar with any professional terms so pls have patience with me.
8 years ago I bought this house and it came with a masoned basement that was already sealed like this. I have no idea what exactly was used but it looks to be a combination of plaster and white paint. The basement feels damp and stuffy, but not unpleasantly so.

A lot of this houses interior ''logistics'' don't really make sense so everything might be possible. During it's lifetime lots of more or less professional people made changes on it. At the beginning the ceiling and parts of the wall were very crumbly and sandy so I've avoided using it since it covered everything with wall dandruff. Over the years it stopped falling off on its own but still comes loose by the slightest touch.

I've also included pictures of the fluffy stuff that has formed where the plaster fell off. I am pretty sure its not mold but some sort of gypsum/mineral crystal, I didn't want to touch it.

However, TLDR: What should I do with this remove/renew? My plan is to use the basement for pottery which will make the room more damp, I am worried more will come off. Or even pose a health risk.

New homeowner here, so I may be overthinking this, but looking for practical advice.

House is new to us, built in 1967, with a poured concrete foundation, not block. We took possession about 2 weeks ago.

After the extreme rainfall in Ottawa on Canada Day — CTV reported 118 mm of rain and said cleanup was underway across the city — I noticed a very small wet area in one corner of a finished basement room.

CTV article for context:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/cleanup-underway-after-118-mm-of-rain-hits-ottawa-on-canada-day/

The wet area was maybe 5 × 5 cm. I panicked a bit and wiped it up quickly, so I didn’t get the best look at it first. It wiped up with a single paper towel, and the paper towel was not even saturated. I would estimate it was well under 1/3 of a cup of water total.

The basement has a floating floor. The moisture seemed to be around/between the floor seams, but water was not continuously coming up through the cracks. The baseboards and surrounding walls are completely dry. No visible staining. No musty smell. I checked the rest of the basement and did not find water anywhere else.

The floor in that area currently does not feel damp, squishy, swollen, or waterlogged. If I ran my hand over it now without knowing what happened, I would not suspect there had been any water there. The water has not come back.

Basement humidity is around 55%. I bought a fan and dehumidifier and have them running now. Planning to run them for 24–48 hours and monitor closely.

Exterior details: that side of the house does not currently have gutters/downspouts. There is also a flower bed with organic material/mulch up against that side of the house. I’m planning to have the grading evaluated, likely add a gutter/downspout, and possibly adjust the flower bed with better slope and stone to move water away from the foundation.

Question: does this sound like a reasonable dry it out, improve exterior drainage, and observe situation for now? Or should I be lifting the floating floor / calling a foundation contractor immediately?

We’re planning to stay in the house long-term, so I want to manage this properly, but I also don’t want to overreact to a very small amount of water after a record rainfall event.

We’ve got a debate going on between two of our most experienced employees, and I’d like to hear from other contractors who install a lot of lawn drainage systems.
We installed a pop up emitter at the end of a lawn drain.

One employee has 33 years with our company and says pop up emitters should never be used because he believes there is rarely enough water flow to open them reliably. Not only that, it’s saturates the soils even more because the little bit of pressure that is built up is pushed out through perforated tiles.

The other employee has 22 years with our company and says they’ve worked well in his experience.

Both have decades of hands on experience, and both are confident in their opinion. We wanna settle this issue and we need some input.

I’m looking for input from contractors with real world experience installing lawn drainage systems.
ems with them not opening, clogging, freezing, or causing backups?
I’d appreciate hearing from contractors who have installed a significant number of these sy

Found this present behind the ceiling full drywall. I should fiix this insurance claim waiting to happen.